Gionee M6 Lite Overview

This year’s Black Friday is upon us. In recent years, the day which usually marks the start of the holiday season shopping craze with massive discounts on items, has become quite popular in Kenya.

Last year, online e-commerce platform Jumia reported an increase in sales by over 10 times the previous year’s Black Friday sales or rather over 12 times the number of sales Jumia Kenya sees on a typical day.

Looking to cash in on the deals craze that is expected on Black Friday this year in the country, other players have taken note. One of those is Kilimall, the Chinese e-commerce platform that has been competing with Jumia locally as more and more Kenyans embrace online shopping.

Taking a cue from the competition, Kilimall has doubled down on the offers in place for this year’s Black Friday. It has, for instance, signed deals with several brands that will see it offer massive discounts on the material day and before since it has already been running an early Black Friday sale.

One of the deals that shoppers can expect to find on Kilimall on Black Friday is something of interest to us: a smartphone, of course.

Kilimall will be offering the Gionee M6 Lite at a discount of 30%. Instead of the Kshs 20,000 that the e-commerce platform says is the device’s marked price, shoppers will be able to get it at Kshs 14,000.

The Gionee M6 Lite is a smaller sibling of the Gionee M6, a smartphone that was announced globally back in July. There is also a bigger sibling, the M6 Plus. Both the M6 and M6 Plus were initially made available in China before slowly making their way overseas like in India where they are on sale.

The M6 Lite is entering the market for the first time anywhere in the world in Kenya where it will be exclusive to Kilimall for Black Friday sales on November 25th before entering the open market thereafter (since Gionee does have a local presence after all and you can spot their branded outlets in downtown Nairobi and the CBD).

Gionee M6 Lite Specifications

Display

5.0-inch HD (1280 x 720 pixels) Curved Edge IPS

Processor

Quad-core MediaTek processor (TBA) clocked at 1.3GHz

Memory

3GB RAM; 32GB internal storage (expandable via microSD)

Camera

Back: 13MP;
Front: 5MP

Operating System

Amigo OS v3.2 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Battery

4,000mAh

Network

3G

Connectivity

microUSB, USB OTG, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/

Colour options

Mocha Gold

Other

Dual-SIM (micro)

Here’s what you get in the box when you purchase the Gionee M6 Lite: a screen protector, a free clear case, a pair of headsets, a wall adaptor and its accompanying USB cable and some documentation (user guide and warranty information).

Some of the notable features of the Gionee M6 Lite include:

1. A clear 5-inch HD display

2. A sharp 13-megapixel back camera and a not-so-sharp 5-megapixel selfie camera

3. Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

This is an upgrade to the Android Lollipop we had to put up with on the last Gionee smartphone we reviewed, the P5W, the first Gionee smartphone to start selling in the open market in Kenya. Like the P5W, the Gionee M6 Lite’s Android 6.0 has Gionee’s own Amigo OS overlay which takes customization to the extremes by introducing its own theme engine, app store, the so-called “mood wallpapers” and even taking the Android quick settings from the top to the bottom where they are accessible via a quick swipe from the bottom of the device’s display.

4. A removable metallic back cover. This makes it easy to swap out the battery…

5. But you are unlikely to ever need to swap out that battery unit for another as it is quite big (4,000mAh) and should last an entire or more if you are not a heavy user. According to Kilimall representatives, a 30-minute charge will result in a user getting a day’s worth of usage time since fast charging is supported.

6. More memory. While quite some notable devices still shamelessly parade 16GB onboard storage as a standard, the M6 Lite’s entry-level pricing also brings with it double that and even more RAM (3GB) to back it up. And it can still be expanded via a microSD card in the event need arises.

The Gionee M6 Lite blends a rather dull design (no, that has nothing to do with the colour) with desirable specifications that you can only get when you near the tail end of the mid-range smartphone spectrum (locally) but at a price that is just sightly above the normal entry-level smartphone’s pricing in the Kenyan market. Even then, it still has to battle it out with the many options available to users from other budget smartphone brands like Cubot, Infinix, Tecno, Wiko among others.